Columns

Southern California has long been a center of aviation and aerospace technology. So it’s painfully ironic that our region has been harmed more than most by the federal government’s failure to upgrade the air traffic control system.

Two of Pasadena’s most iconic landmarks, the Rose Bowl and the Pasadena Playhouse, are approaching their hundredth anniversaries. And they are both doing what you would do if you ran venerable nonprofits approaching the century mark — you’d launch fundraising campaigns to shore up both their aging bricks and mortar and their incredible programming.

No one in American public life has more disdain for experts and their expertise than President Donald Trump. And yet, there he was in late August, on the south portico of the White House (a “dump,” he had called it a week earlier) eyeing a near-total eclipse of the sun without special glasses.

HOUSTON — When Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, followed by a strong hurricane in Florida, much of the media response indicated that the severe weather was a sign of catastrophic climate change, payback for mass suburbanization — and even a backlash by Mother Nature against the election of President Donald Trump.

Only seven months into his puzzling presidency, Donald Trump has accomplished an odd achievement: He’s made Sigmund Freud relevant again. Although the father of psychoanalysis is no longer fashionable, the Freudian concept of psychological projection is alive and well.

The chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Cybersecurity Caucus is concerned about coffee pots. And he’s not alone. A bipartisan group of senators is worried about coffee makers, as well as toasters, refrigerators, thermostats, DVRs and security cameras.

Is L.A. really in L.A.? That is the fundamental question of the newest iteration of Pacific Standard Time, the Getty-led initiative exploding across 70 Southern California cultural institutions through next January: Is Los Angeles, nominally a Yanqui town, in fact a part of Latin America? The answer, of course, is sí, and now more than ever, and thank goodness for that.

California lawmakers should support the recent request made by state Senators Anthony Portantino and Connie Leyva and Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez to utilize cap-and-trade program funds to complete the Foothill Gold Line light-rail project from Glendora to Montclair.

For years — for decades — access to one of the great hikes in the San Gabriels, the Mount Wilson Toll Road to Henninger Flats and beyond to the peak of Wilson itself, has been complicated by a frequently locked gate in the fence at the principal trailhead.

California’s fast-growing advanced energy economy is good for business and the economy. The industry is a source of more than 500,000 jobs across the state, and a bill now before the Legislature would make things even better.

Californians interested in keeping this state’s toughest-in-the-world standards for automotive pollution heaved a sigh of relief when the federal Environmental Protection Agency in early August reversed an earlier decision to delay imposition of new national ozone standards for at least a year.

I often have to remind myself that being on the internet is like being at a huge house party. Everyone is gathered in one big venue. You might huddle up with a few other people in the corner to have what you consider to be an intimate conversation, but there’s always the possibility someone else in the room will overhear what you’re saying.

California’s political leaders, having ignored and even abetted our housing shortage, now pretend that they will “solve it.” Don’t bet on it. Their big ideas include a $4 billion housing subsidy bond and the stripping away of local control over zoning, and mandating densification of already developed areas.

Fulfilling his role as the titular head of “The Resistance,” Barack Obama took to Facebook Tuesday to snipe at the Trump administration’s announcement that it was rescinding the 44th president’s 2012 executive action called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Social media is yesterday. AI is tomorrow. What does that tell us about today? These kinds of thoughts are on the minds of some of the most powerful and consequential people in the world, although not, by a big stretch, all of them.

I was saddened to learn of the injury of three small children, one of them critically, by a falling 20-foot eucalyptus branch at the Linda Vista Children’s Center, a daycare facility, in Pasadena late last month.

There is the world, and then there are the lines on the map. One is reality in the universal sense, by which I mean physical matter in our universe; the squiggly things on paper, well thought out or not so much by cartographers and their masters, create either the perfection that is California or the disaster that is Iraq.

The mystery is why anyone was surprised. President Donald Trump shocked Capitol Hill Republicans on Wednesday by quickly agreeing to a deal proposed by House and Senate Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Last week, Robert Sass, vice president of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, wrote a response to a column of mine pointing out that crime rates in California remain at near-record lows even after the passage of criminal justice reforms.

The first time Jerry Brown was governor of California, his greatest policy defeat came when resentful Northern Californians voted almost unanimously in 1982 to reverse a legislative vote authorizing a massive ditch around the delta of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers.

Walking through the halls of what is now Eliot Arts Magnet Middle school the other day as I prepared to write about the alma mater’s new focus, I remarked to the teachers and administrators around me that, while I often read and hear about what a terrible time that period of adolescence apparently is for so many, I had a blast during the junior high years.

During his first Texas trip to bring assurance to residents and government officials that the federal government was ready to offer whatever assistance was needed in the wake of Hurricane Harvey and the disastrous flooding that followed, President Donald Trump was confident that the crisis would be met.

I plan to spend this Labor Day with my family, and I encourage you to find a Labor Day celebration near you. And when you do, you’ll find the Californians who are making America great. Teachers, emergency first-responders, nurses and all working people are the backbone of our nation and deserve to be recognized, as such, both in word and deed.

The great disrupter is rapidly becoming a great disaster — for the country, his party and even his own political base. In order to save anything from his landmark 2016 victory, President Donald Trump must go — the sooner, the better.

Labor Day weekend is usually family time for me, as it occurs around my birthday. It’s also a reminder of how being a union member has improved my life, and that of my community too. I’m a pharmacist at California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The Baby Boomer generation has become a magnet for a certain kind of potent political criticism. By some accounts, as youthful revolutionaries, they ruined the 1960s; as the “Me Generation,” they wrecked the ’70s; in yet another incarnation, as yuppies, they trashed the ’80s; careening into their reckless and naïve later years, they created unfulfillable social and economic expectations in the late ’90s that led to a crash and protracted hangover in the 2000s; and this decade, unwilling to relinquish center stage in American life, they gave us a Clinton-versus-Trump matchup that left many voters wishing it could all have been at least a little different.

How did we go, less than a week after racist violence in Charlottesville, Va., from removing statues of Robert E. Lee to talking about obliterating edifices honoring Ulysses S. Grant and Christopher Columbus? The short answer is: “It’s human nature.

This newspaper editorialized recently that the community should exercise restraint in judging the events involving USC Medical School’s former dean, a Pasadena resident, because of California’s “Good Samaritan” law.

Here in the Golden State of train-hating, where every other letter-to-the-editor writer rails against conductor Jerry Brown’s “bullet train to nowhere,” I set out Thursday on two trains to somewhere and then the world’s shortest railway 298 feet to Bunker Hill.

Sometimes, California’s laws are like a guillotine on a timer. By the time the blade drops, everybody who set it up has made a safe getaway. To illustrate, consider four different laws that did their damage long after the perpetrators moved on, and a brand new one that’s likely to raise rents and perhaps tax Californians right out of their own homes.

Two years ago, Monique Saldaña became a mother at age 16. Lost and unsure, she dropped out of high school. She credits the support system she built with her case manager and other teen mothers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) for helping her navigate this confusing time.

Marisol Ramirez is one of more than 80 full-time hospital valet drivers at UCLA Medical Center, most of whom are about to lose their jobs just months after reporting that the low-wage private contractor employing them was paying less than required by university policy.

With the passage of local minimum-wage laws, organizations serving people with developmental disabilities are strained to continue their vital work as the reimbursement rates for those services are set and controlled by the state of California.

California is home to amazing natural resources, a diverse economy and a hard-working population eager to flourish. However, we don’t have sufficient water to meet the needs of all who call California home.

The 23-campus California State University system knows it must somehow speed up graduation beyond today’s pace, which sees just 19 percent of entering freshmen graduate within four years. The low rate is at least partly because more than a third of frosh need some remedial work.

Over the past decade, there has been a growing fixation among planners and developers alike for a return to the last century’s monocentric cities served by large-scale train systems. And, to be sure, in a handful of older urban regions, mass transit continues to play an important — and even vital — role in getting commuters to downtown jobs.

Has President Trump been in office for only seven months? It’s been enough drama for seven years — with no letup in sight. So, as beach vacations wind to a close and Congress prepares to return to Washington, let’s get a jump on contemplating the qualities Americans will want in their 46th president.

As the multi-sided war in Syria grinds on, cynicism about the future is more than justified. Arguably, America has failed time and again to secure its objectives and follow through on its intentions in its halting, lurching, incomplete intervention.

Once in a while the people who really run America step briefly out of the shadows to quash an idea that might threaten their interests. Discussion is choked off, and the idea is suddenly off the table.

Decades of neuroscience research have proven that 90 percent of critical brain development happens in the first five years of life. During this crucial window of opportunity, children from infancy to age 5 have the greatest potential for becoming eager learners and succeeding in school and in life.